Paul
Finglemore divided his time between his two families but the Luthor branch got
the short end of the stick as he lived most of his life as Dr. Thomas
Wainwright. Thomas Wainwright would leave his family to do charity work once a
quarter, traveling around Kansas giving medical attention to rural
areas without a doctor. Actually he would shave his beard and return to Sally
Finn for a month at a time.The Wainwrights had a total of three
children, Henry born 1892, Alexander
born 1894 and John
born 1910.[1]

Henry King Wainwright 1892-1985

Henry was
a small, sickly child who suffered from mild dwarfism and a crook back. Despite
his great desire to fit in with the other children Henry could not compete on a
physical level.[2]Henry was bullied and mocked.
Henry spent his childhood immersed in literature and science. Although his
father encouraged the boy’s scholarly pursuits, he did not spend a great deal
of time with the children—like many fathers of that time. When Henry began
hearing voices in his head as a small child, he soon realized that these were
the thoughts of people surrounding him. His father's true disappointment of his
physicality was devastating. When he was thirteen Henry became ill and nearly
died. After that the learned that he could project thoughts
into someone's mind. At first this was a small ability. Henry became
interested in science and biology hoping to find the biological mechanism that
controlled his gift.

Unlike
his brother Alexander Henry remained at home until it was time for him to go to
college. Once he did leave, however, his family never heard from him again. His
first year at college was a horror because he became sexually mature at this
same time. Like his younger brother John, whom he knew nothing about, he
matured slowly, yet not quite as slowly as John did. Henry's short, twisted
body was not looked upon with favor by the fairer sex, and so he remained
alone. The humiliation of this might have allayed after a while if he had not
also been able to feel the disgust and loathing rising from these beautiful
women. During this time Henry learned that anger and sexual frustration/desire
could channel his projective telepathy. As Henry studied psychology and
biology, he honed his gift. He changed his name to Henry King, the later name
chosen as a goal he intended to live up to; he would become a ruler of men—a
ruler of the world—with his gift.

Henry
King became a medical doctor and a psychiatrist, all while honing his mental
gifts. He was quite tentative about actually using them. This was especially
true after he heard about how the Great Powers had killed a man named John and
his fellow members of a utopian colony because the colonists had had exhibited
mental powers. Henry later learned that his brother Alexander had become a
brilliant master criminal. Henry wondered if perhaps as a test he should try
something of this nature.

Dr. Henry
King first achieved this scheme in his dreams. In 1939 Dr. King became one of
the few people to deliberately direct his subconscious to visit the Dreamlands,
descending the seven hundred steps to the Gate of Deeper Slumber and setting
out through the Enchanted Wood. From there he traveled through secret passages,
and hidden trails where unearthly flora twisted into the visages of chthonic
deities which swallowed all unwary visitors. He emerged into the shared
unconsciousness of urban America, a dream version of his waking
life that, having power over dream, he could mold, shape and sculpt into his
own desires. He formed a vast criminal empire in the Dreamlands, where he
called himself Dr. Sivana. Yet even in the Dreamlands
he could not escape the influence of costumed vigilantes and was opposed by a
caped super hero named Captain Marvel. When he felt confident enough to use his
abilities in his waking life, despite being defeated by Captain Marvel several
times, Dr. Henry King moved slowly towards creating a real world criminal
empire, taking the cognomen “The Brain Wave” for these purposes. [3]

Rather
than expose himself to danger or possible legal repercussions he worked through
a patsy, using low level telepathy and ability to create solid illusions.[4]
Dr. King induced a fellow scientist, who had mocked his theories about psychic
powers, into a state of madness. Directed by voices the scientist Dr. Able used
the name Dr. Elba.[5] Dr. Elba created a crime wave using
blackmail, with information supplied by King as one of the voices and also by
using a serum that drove men insane. The serum was derived from the hormones of
a rare species of African ape that underwent periodic bouts of madness.

Dr. Elba
overreached his ambition, and although he had schemes going in several
Northeastern American cities he left a trail that led back to him. His schemes
were thwarted by several of the costumed vigilantes of the day, who did not
actually work as a unit, but did end the various plots within days of one
another. When faced with capture Dr. Elba purportedly injected himself with his
own serum and jumped out of a window. Actually Henry King induced Elba to jumpand
so prevented anyone from realizing Elba had been a puppet.

Intrigued
by the arrival of costumed interference in Elba's plans, the Brain Wave
approached the United States Army in his role as psychiatrist Dr. Henry King,
desiring to undertake a study on behalf of the Army to delve into the
psychology of the mystery men. The Army allowed King to interview each of the
members of the Auxiliary Logistical and Special Tactical Response Squadron, but
their identities would remain secret and he could only have a few moments each.
All King needed to establish contact with a subject was a handshake.

As a test
of his powers and a possible way of eliminating powerful opposition to his
future plans of criminal supremacy, King began to invade the dreams of the
mystery men and women who had opposed him. He filled their nighttime dreams
with images of wartime conflict. He replayed the dreams over several nights,
with each night the dreams becoming ever more realistic. His aim was to have
them dream themselves to death by convincing them that the events were real and
that they were powerless to prevent their violent ends at the hands of Japanese
soldiers. Dr. King had designed a machine to amplify his psionic energy and
tried to conclude this plan with one fell swoop by causing the mystery men’s
dreams to blend into one large battle of the ALSTR squadron against the forces
of Japan. Their collective will, however,
proved to be too strong for him, especially when Alan Scott—the man known as
the Green Lantern—marshaled their wills against The Brain Wave's will and used
the Dreamlands version of his power ring to destroy the dream version of Japan.
Green Lantern's weapon was a psionic amplifier that was as effective in this
dream state as he was in the real world.[6]The
feedback from the Green Lantern's counter attack shorted out The Brain Wave's
psionic amplifier and caused him to lose his projective telepathy for months. All
Star Squadron 19 and 20 depicted The Brain Wave as having lured the Justice
Society and other members of the All Star Squadron to the New York World’s Fair pavilion and hooking
them into a large device. In reality he actually had no physical contact with
the members of ALSTR nor were they gathered together during their collective
dream.

Over the
next year, Henry King created a criminal empire, that is to say as a freelance
criminal psychiatrist he met, made contact with, and began to influence
criminals in various cities on the East coast of the United States. By chance
or by design the cities in which King chose to direct crime sprees were the
home cities of various costumed vigilantes. It is likely that he chose these
cities deliberately to taunt the costumed mystery men with his cleverness.
Despite having used proxies and having mentally directed his criminal
activities from afar, he underestimated how persistent and intelligent the
mystery men were. Having defeated his proxy criminals, each of the costumed
mystery men discovered that the trail led back to the dummy bank accounts that
King had set up in his base of operations, a small city on the coast of Maine. Each of the criminals had also
described the mysterious figure that had invaded their dreams. Four of the mysterymen converged in the small town in Maine—called SharkstoothBay in the comics—and realized that
they all sought the same person. King had not taken pains to disguise his
appearance to the townspeople, and so the mystery men were directed to his base
of operations, a lighthouse.

The four
mystery men and the one mystery woman entered his domicile with the intent of
capturing him. As a ruse, The Brain Wave created mental doppelgangers of the
mystery men’s and mystery woman's paramours and made it appear as if he held
them hostage.[7]As a
bargain for his freedom he allowed the vigilantes to free their paramours and
then commanded these mental creations to attack the vigilantes. He attempted to
escape during the fight between the vigilantes and their imagined foes.
However, King was accidentally knocked out of a window and apparently plunged
to his death below. The foes of the mysterymen winked
out of existence upon King's demise.

But Dr.
King had not died. A tree limb caught him as he fell, momentarily stunning him.
Realizing that he was too weakened to take on all of these heroes, he projected
a mental illusion that hid him from their view. He spent the next two months
honing and refining his mental powers, and he came up with a great plan of
vengeance.

When Dr.
King was ready to enact his vengeance he lured the four mystery men who had
previously defeated him to his tower and then seemingly subjected them to a
shrinking ray he had invented, placing them on small shelves as trophies. He
then had a meeting with his four lieutenants who lived in the home cities of
the captured vigilantes and described the crime wave that he wished for them to
undertake.

According
to the comic-book version of events, Hawkman summoned
his feathered friends who flew the shrunken heroes to their home cities, where
they ended the crime waves. After the crimes had been thwarted, Johnny Thunder
decided to use his magic thunderbolt to restore the heroes to their original
size. The restored heroes returned to The Brain Wave's hideout, but he had
mined the road. The heroes noticed the mines, and Johnny Thunder's thunderbolt
placed the mines underneath the tower so that when The Brain Wave pressed the
detonation plunger for the explosive plunger he actually blew himself up.

Dr. King
did not really invent a shrinking ray nor did he shrink the heroes to the size
of eight inches. This was one of his greatest illusions; he thoroughly
convinced the four mystery men that they had in fact been shrunk. He also was
able to cloak them in mentally created illusions that gave them the appearance
of being eight inches tall to outside observers. Although he actually
imprisoned them in iron cages, he made it appear as though they were placed on
a shelf. His control of their mental perception was such that they could touch
and feel the iron bars of their cages and not realize it.

There was
one flaw in his plan, however, and this was due to one individual. The
individual in question was Johnny Thunder, a man of limited intelligence who
managed to track down and tag along with various heroes in various cities.
Johnny claimed to be the possessor of a magic thunderbolt that granted his
wishes. While there are documented cases of beings such as the Djinn sometimes
crossing over into ordinary reality and functioning to a limited degree in the
WNU existence, this does not appear to be what happened in Thunder’s case.
Johnny Thunder appears to have been to what used to be called an idiot savant.
Along with Thunder's limited intelligence, he was also gifted with powerful psionic
powers, which he used in a limited fashion and for some reason had convinced
himself that a magic friend was actually carrying out the feats of wonder. The
genie may have been a manifestation of the lonely boy's imaginary friend.

In his
comic book origin (Flash Comics #1, January 1940) Johnny Thunder was kidnapped
as a child from his American parents by agents of Badhnisia
(a small Asian country), because he had been born at a time of great
significance to them - the 7th hour of the 7th day of the 7th month
of 1917 - which they believed would mean that he would grow to wield great
power at his 7th birthday. In this story, Johnny was an only child - later, it
was stated that it was the fact that he was the 7th son of a 7th son that
entitled him to his power. Johnny was given a magic belt featuring the
inscription 'CEI-U' (the magic words which summon the Thunderbolt) by the Badhnisians. Unfortunately for Badhnisia,
it soon found itself at war with a neighboring country. Johnny was hidden away
in a secret place, though he didn't stay there for long. He fell into a boat
and eventually made his way back to the United States and his family.

Many years later while working as a window cleaner, Johnny saw a
colleague fall from a window several stories high. Since he'd just spoken the words
'say you' (CEI-U), when Johnny called out to his colleague to stop falling, his
magic Thunderbolt appeared and stopped the man from falling to his death.

While
Johnny Thunder may indeed have been born on the 7th hour of the 7th day of the
7th month of 1917, the story of him being the seventh son of a seventh son, and
the idea that he may have been raised in the mythical land of Badhesia was likely been wish fulfillment on Johnny's part.
Or rather the fantasy of an autistic savant child abandoned at birth that had
lived through the rigors and horrors of the orphanage system. The heroes who
were "privileged" to partner up with Johnny Thunder did not know how
the magic effects that often accompanied Johnny were achieved but only that on
occasion he was useful.

Johnny
wished for the magic Thunderbolt to restore the heroes to their original size.
Actually using his formidable but unacknowledged psionic abilities Johnny was
able to overpower Henry King's pervasive illusion and show the captured heroes
their true situation. They freed themselves from the cages and sought out Henry
King. Hawkman flew after the four criminal
lieutenants who had left by car. Dr. Fate accompanied him.[8]

Johnny
Thunder, Dr. Midnite and The Atom continue searching
for Henry King.[9] They discovered King at the top of his
lighthouse. He claimed to have mined the entire complex. Having failed at his
establishing his criminal empire, Dr. King was going to commit suicide and take
as many heroes as he could with him. Dr. King pushed the plunger of the
dynamite and the tower exploded. Johnny's magic thunderbolt carried Johnny, Dr.
Midnite and the Atom out of harms' way. They saw the
tower destroyed.

The
explosion was real, however the image of The Brain Wave pushing the plunger was
not real; Dr. King had set dynamite charges hoping to kill the meddling
costumed heroes. But he had mistimed his charges and so was caught in the
explosion and hurt. He survived with a twisted leg and a shoulder injury that
healed improperly giving him the appearance of a hunchback.

Prior to
embarking on his career as a criminal mastermind, Dr. King had manufactured an
identity for himself as Dr. Forest Malone, an expert in dream psychology. As
part of the false identity, Dr. King projected a false image of himself using
his projective telepathy. This identity was a legitimate cover in which King
could take shelter in case his real identity was compromised. He fell in love
with his office assistant a girl named Marva. She reciprocated his affections
and they were married. On their wedding night he revealed his true appearance
to her, that of a short man with a twisted back and an oversized head. Actually
this was an illusion as well; it being the image that Dr. Henry King used to
hide his real appearance as a frail, bald man with a small humpback. She fled
in horror but returned shortly, discovering she loved the man inside rather
than how he appeared.[10] Soon after Marva returned to him, Dr.
Forest Malone discovered that he could use her as a medium with which to draw
ectoplasm from the spiritual world and create solid three-dimensional thought
images. With her help he created a pleasing shape made of ectoplasm that
covered his own hideous seeming body. He resented Marva for accepting this more
pleasing shape and also because he needed her to create his solid illusions.
Dr. King was a sexual psychopath, strongly desiring women but also despising
them as worthless chattel to be used and abused. He apparently did not act upon
those impulses, so far as can be determined, until his rejection by Marva and
his dependence upon her.[11]

However
having discovered his new power Dr. Henry King embarked on a series of
depredations against women which the comic's versions only hint. King
hypnotized the unwilling Marva into accompanying him and using her power to
draw ectoplasm. He would then gain entrance into the homes of various women by
impersonating their sweethearts, husbands, or friends and subjecting them to
humiliation, rape, torture, and in some cases murder. Concerned over these
crimes against women, Wonder Woman became involved. King had run up against
Wonder Woman twice in his previous exploits. He was in awe of and frightened of
her feminine beauty; he both hated and loved her. Investigating these crimes,
Wonder Woman quickly noted that a woman with an identical description was
always near the scene of the crimes, something that the police apparently
overlooked. Wonder Woman spotted Marva as she waited patiently outside of the
house of one of the victims. Wonder Woman confronted Marva and suddenly Marva
was freed of the hypnotism placed upon her. A scream inside followed. Wonder
Woman apprehended a dwarfish man, who the lady of the house claimed had been
her husband a moment before. Marva confessed that she had been forced to do the
twisted dwarf’s bidding and vowed not to allow him to use her again. Marva only
knew the dwarfish man as Dr. Psycho and could not recall much about herself. The dwarfish Dr. Psycho was arrested and jailed to
stand trial for murder.[12]

A month
after Dr. Psycho was jailed, Marva appeared to have had
a change of heart and visited him in prison. The next morning, Dr. Psycho's
sleeping body disappeared as if it were smoke. This was one of Dr. Psycho's
illusions, and the bad doctor had escaped. Once again with Marva's unwilling aid, he used his ectoplasmic
power for evil. Blaming Wonder Woman for Marva's
betrayal and his subsequent incarceration, Psycho tried to destroy the super
heroine’s reputation. Assuming the form of Wonder Woman, Dr. Psycho murdered
Steve Howard's secretary in full view of the office staff. Even at this early
date Wonder Woman had such a strong reputation for justice and morality that
people did not believe the story, instead concluding it was in fact one of her
enemies trying to discredit her or a case of mistaken identity. The real killer
was unmasked once again as Marva came to her senses and dissipated the
ectoplasm about Dr. Psycho. Dr. Psycho was sent to jail once more. In a few
days he was free once again.

While
Wonder Woman was performing at a charity carnival, Dr. Psycho appeared and
challenged her to a contest of speed and strength. He was able to best her at
both of these contests.[13] Even though he had beaten Wonder Woman, the crowd booed him
and cheered her. When Wonder Woman tried to deflect the crowd's jeers by
stating that he had won fair and square, Dr. Psycho believed that she was
mocking him. He stole her magic lasso and forced her to do humiliating acts in
public. Even so, Wonder Woman tried to convince him that she wanted to be his
friend. She may have been sincere in this, but she could also have trying to
keep Dr. Psycho on an even temper in the crowd so that he could not use his new
powers to hurt people. Finally Dr. Psycho could not bring himself to believe
her and made it appear as though the carnival mast had broken and that the tent
was falling. As Wonder Woman tried to hold up the pole, Dr. Psycho escaped.

A few
months later Dr. Psycho once again planned to destroy Wonder Woman by proxy,
too afraid by now to confront her personally. He convinced Paula Dupree that
she was in love with Steve Trevor and that the only way to have him was to kill
Wonder Woman. Paula Dupree was a female gorilla who had been transformed by
surgery and genetic therapy into a beautiful human woman but who still retained
many of her bestial traits.[14]

Although
Paula initially overpowered Wonder Woman and defeated her in battle, Diana
subdued her with her magic lasso. Paula was then remanded to the custody of the
sanitarium where Dr. Psycho had found her, although the comic book version of
these events had Wonder Woman taking Paula to ParadiseIsland.[15]

Early
in 1944 Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor unveiled what was supposed to be a statue
of Wonder Woman built from copper pennies donated by her young fans. They
were flabbergasted to see that it had been stolen and replaced by a statue of
Dr. Psycho. Dr. Psycho called Diana Prince and asked her to tell Wonder Woman
that he would return her statue since he felt guilty about stealing from
children. He gave her a time and place to pick up the statue. This turned out
to be a ruse. He knocked out Wonder Woman with a mind bolt and created two ectoplasmic Wonder Women—one which was tyrannical and the
other of which was vain—and sent them out into the world.[16]
The duplicates chained Wonder Woman to a whale's back.[17] Wonder Woman freed herself, and she convinced the vain
Wonder Woman to attack the tyrannical one. Wonder Woman encircled both of the
duplicates in her magic lasso. Dr. Psycho was hard pressed to maintain the
structural integrity of his constructs; since they were physical manifestations
of his mind, the lasso also affected him. During his concentration on the
battle Steve Trevor knocked him unconscious. The duplicates faded into
nothingness and Dr. Psycho was captured once more and escaped again.

As the
war continued Dr. Malone found that his private practice became so busy that he
did not have time to spend bothering Wonder Woman or other costumed vigilantes.
Once the war had ended, however, he soon returned to his old tricks. There was
a great upsurge in the mistreatment of women by returning soldiers and civilian
personnel. Most people believed that this was because men resented women for
having altered the sexual status quo during the war. Having taken over jobs
that had once been the exclusive employment of men while the men were at war,
many women were reluctant to give these positions up. Also many women
began to assert a more equal status on the domestic front. The resultant
backlash manifested in a rise of the depiction of independent women as
scheming, loose connivers—depicted cinematically as the film noir femme fatale.
The public propaganda against independent womanhood was unfortunately
accompanied by an upsurge of crimes against women. Wonder Woman was not so
certain that this wide-spread reaction was merely the result of post-war stress
or if there was a deliberate force behind it. Diana discovered a pattern behind
the seeming random violence and triangulated the point of origination. This led
her to Dr. Psycho, who eluded her once again. Shortly after this Diana was
shocked when the woman she knew as Marva was struck by an automobile before her
eyes and died bleeding her life out in Diana's arms. When Marva gave up her
last breath she faded away to nothingness. It appears that having failed to use
his ectoplasm shaping power to destroy Wonder Woman and tired of his nagging
remnant of a moral conscience, Dr. King killed off its manifestation, Marva.

The next
public scheme of Dr. Psycho was a rather lame attempt to discredit Steve Trevor.
Dr. King arranged for a small-time thief and murderer to be transformed into
the likeness of Steve Trevor through plastic surgery. He then committed crimes.
This was a bit of a test to see how far Diana's devotion to Steve Trevor went.
According to the comic-book version, Diana could not bring herself to apprehend
a man who looked like the man she loved, and so she retired. In actuality she
had no trouble separating the identities of the two men no matter how alike
they may have looked. She took the ersatz Trevor into custody with no qualms
whatsoever.[18]

In 1946
as Dr. Forest Malone, an expert in dream psychology, King solicited the OSS to test his theories about remote
viewing and test his new dream analyzer. Always willing to try new technologies
that would give them an edge, the OSS agreed. They also agreed that the
costumed vigilantes would make good volunteers because of the strength of their
determination for justice and patriotism. Instead of a dream analyzer, the
device was a dream inducer that slowly drove its subjects mad instead of
recording their dreams. Dr. King had injected them with a variety of
psychoactive and narcotic substances before placing them in the dream inducer.
Johnny Thunder was the only person not affected by the drugs and dream inducer.
Johnny's mutant ability and his autism oddly enough combined to make it hard
for him to be mind controlled. Confronted with his now-dysfunctional teammates
and the victorious Brain Wave, Johnny Thunder again summoned his magical
Thunderbolt to restore his comrades and capture the Brain Wave. That is, Johnny
used his own psionic powers to remove Dr. King's influence over the costumed
vigilantes and gave Dr. King a mind blast that knocked him out, temporarily
stunning his psionic powers. This time there was no escape and Henry King got
his first taste of a long term jail sentence.[19]

In the
winter of 1947, Dr. King was contacted by a man who knew at least one of his
criminal personas, that of Dr. Psycho. This man wished for Dr. Psycho to
participate in a far-ranging plan to neutralize some of the costumed vigilantes
whose efforts against crime had put a crimp in various criminal enterprises
across the United States. The costumed vigilantes so
targeted were those who had their abilities augmented by special devices. The
various criminals contacted by the man who called himself The Collector wanted
to first gain possession of these devices and then use them against the rest of
the costumed vigilantes. Since The Collector knew of Dr. Psycho‘s special
animosity towards Wonder Woman, Psycho was given the task of stealing her magic
lasso and girdle. To achieve this goal Dr. King recruited some unwilling aid.
He broke Paula Dupree from her sanitarium and also recruited the Nazi spy Paula
von Gunther to help in stealing the two objects.
Despite the overwhelming force deployed against her, Wonder Woman prevailed. In
this instance Dr. Psycho was too distracted and intimidated by these three
beautiful women to concentrate properly. He allowed his control over Paula Gunther and Paula Dupree to slip and the women escaped from
his control. [20]

Through
the underworld the Collector let it be known that he also was seeking the
services of the Brain Wave, not realizing this was another alias of the same
man. Dr. Henry King contacted him in the guise of The Brain Wave and was
assigned the task of stealing the Green Lantern's ring. The Collector was in
truth Vandal Savage[21] who was working in concert with a man
named the Thinker[22], a young man named Per Degaton[23]and
a pair of lesser known criminals known only as The Gambler[24]
and The Wizard[25]. The Thinker was to negate The Flash's
power, Vandal Savage was to capture Hawkman's wings,
Per Degaton was to take on Dr. Midnite, and the
Gambler was to challenge Dr. Fate.[26] To accentuate their plans and to create
a diversion, The Wizard was in charge of releasing prisoners from
penitentiaries across the nation.

The
criminals were initially successful in capturing their particular foes and
removing their sources of power, but the whole plan collapsed because of the
arrogance of The Brain Wave. Having felled the Green Lantern with a mind blast
The Brain Wave saw the Lantern fall into a ravine and plummet to a certain
death. The Brain Wave did not follow through to make certain that the Green
Lantern had indeed died. Although his ring protected him from serious harm, the
Green Lantern was injured.[27]It took
him a few days to recover enough to track down the location of the captive
heroes where the villains were attempting to wrest the secrets of their
technology from them. The mock trial in the comic-book version was a fiction
created by the comic-book writers at the vigilantes’ request not to disclose
the fact that they had been tortured for information about their devices, so as
not to give other villains the same idea. Green Lantern did impersonate the
Thinker but did so to free the others. Once freed, the vigilantes rounded up
the criminals and turned them over to the police. [28]

While he
was in jail, Dr. King was approached to work for the newly created Central
Intelligence Division in their Psy-Ops division.
Given a free hand, Dr. King designed programs that would later be known for
creating sleeper assassins who could be triggered by certain phrases. He also
worked for MK-Ultra [29]and designed mental enhancement drugs
that did not quite work out as well as intended[30]

In the
late fifties Dr. King had the idea to test his theories on the general public
and use people who would susceptible to mind-control techniques and
brainwashing and—in the opinion of the Agency—who would not be missed if the
experiment went awry. These were narcotic addicts. Dr. King called the program Symbion to emphasize that people were part of a greater
whole, that society was a living organism, and also because of the use of
symbolism in the therapy. The therapy was a combination of ego destruction of
the addict by his peers directed by the Programmer. When the ego destruction
was complete, the ego reconstruction would begin, using sophisticated dream
therapy and symbolism. They were actually using brainwashing techniques later
co-opted by several cults.

One of
the first persons who entered the program was Merry Pemberton, a society
debutante who had moonlighted as costumed vigilante in the forties. She had
been known as Merry the Girl of a 1000 Gimmicks. When she became hooked on
heroin, her family disowned her and she became a prostitute to survive and keep
supplied with heroin. She took the street name Merry the Girl with a 1000 Tricks.
Merry quickly fell in love with Dr. King's illusionary image of a strapping
young man with a full head of red hair. She eventually became his wife and a
spokeswoman for the movement. Symbion grew over the
next decade and a half. The CIA disliked King's growing status and tried to
have it shut down. King out-maneuvered them by having Symbion
registered as a religious organization in 1972.

There
were radical splinters of Symbion that King publicly
disavowed, such as the Symbionese Liberation Army,
but which he actually directed. Symbion began to
attack its critics, including legislators and government representatives, and
reporters who investigated the Church. People were beaten, rattlesnakes were
put in mailboxes, and the daughter of a major newspaper publishing chain was
kidnapped. Not only was she kidnapped but King successfully brainwashed her
into become a member of the Symbionese Liberation
Army and had her carry out robberies with them.

Captain America and Power Girl helped to raid the
Symbionese Liberation Army hideout. The terrorists
chose to take their lives rather than be captured.

A few
days later Power Girl managed to free the captured heiress from her captors.
There were definite links between the Symbion
organization and this terrorist offshoot, despite claims to the otherwise. The
CIALD was given the green light to take the leaders of Symbion
into custody for stockpiling weapons and laundering money taken in bank
robberies. The CIA's domestic intelligence offices suddenly came by the information
that fingerprints proved that the leader of Symbion
was Dr. Henry King, formerly known as The Brain Wave, an ex-convict. When
Captain America and Power Girl went to the Symbion Compound, they found Dr. Henry King gone, as was
his front man. Many of the cultists had however poisoned themselves by drinking
doctored coffee. Among these was reported to be Merry Pemberton.

Dr. Henry
King eluded capture, but his reputation was in a shambles. And he mourned
Merry, for he had truly loved her. Wishing vengeance on the world for having
destroyed all that he had created and loved, in June of 1975 he contacted his
old comrade in crime Per Degaton, who was currently using another name and no
longer looked as he had as a youth. Per Degaton had become quite wealthy through
various criminal schemes, and he agreed to help Dr. King because it would
further some of his own plans. Per Degaton allowed Dr. King the use of a
satellite and a weather-making device. With these he staged a series of
catastrophes across the globe in a bid for world domination.[31] A volcano formed in Peking, an earthquake occurred in Seattle, a gas disaster occurred in Africa. These activities captured the
eventual attention of the CIALD and the Diogenes Club. A team of CIALD
contractors and two members of the Diogenes Club were sent to stop the
satellite and its controller before any more disasters occurred.

Power
Girl was once again among those who captured Dr. King, as was the person whom
the comic story called Colonel Steven Trevor. This was to provide continuity to
the Wonder Woman mythos and also to protect the real name of the government
agent. This character was later called Steve Howard and so we will adopt that
name. It was learned that the disasters had in fact not been real, as with
other of Per Degaton's inventions the disaster
satellite did work. Dr. King had used the satellite to augment his projective
telepathy so that he created realistic illusions of the disasters, so real in
fact that some people did succumb to injuries[32].
In a few days' time, Dr. Henry King was again in jail.

Dr. Henry
King was not imprisoned long however and soon was free.

In
February of 1976, he teamed with the Wizard, who was not his old companion from
days gone by but another using the name. His plan to hijack the Alaskan
pipeline was defeated by Power Girl, Prince Zarkon,
and the Omega organization in Alaska. [33]

In
September of 1977 Dr. King pulled his most outrageous crime, he sent a message
to the newspapers stating that unless certain costumed vigilantes were placed
in solitary confinement and on death row in prison, he would send the home
cities of these heroes to the Phantom Zone. His list of vigilantes demonstrated
that Dr. King was losing his faculties for it included the original Flash, the
Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and a few others who were dead or retired. He also
named Power Girl and Wonder Woman[34] and asked for a million dollars per
city. The threat was ignored and Kansas City, where the original Flash had
retired, disappeared. This was, of course, another of The Brain Wave's
fantastic illusions; the city never went anywhere, people were just prevented
from seeing or hearing it. Although the comic book has Power Girl once more
capturing Dr. Henry King, this time it was actually Wonder Woman, although
Power Girl was also involved to a lesser degree. [35]

In 1979, Dr.
King briefly took advantage of a situation in which several costumed vigilantes
had lost their moral inhibitions from drinking contaminated water from the
so-called Stream of Ruthlessness. He used his mental abilities to increase the
violent tendencies of the vigilantes. Once again he was thwarted by Power Girl,
among others.

After
once again confronting Wonder Woman Dr. King developed an obsession for Steve
Trevor that made his hatred for Wonder Woman all the more intense.[36]
Viewing his attraction towards Steve Howard as something external rather than
internal, Dr. King believed that the only way to eliminate it was to eliminate
Wonder Woman and Steve Howard. He arranged a situation where Wonder Woman and
Steve Howard were informed about the activities of some Russian spies. These
Russian spies reacted with deadly force and Steve Howard was badly wounded.
This took place in March of 1981.

Only when
Steve Howard was nearly dead did Dr. King realize that he did not want the man
to die. However, rather than admit that his motives were due to his attraction
to Howard, Dr. King suddenly realized that Steve Howard could be used as a
medium to pull ectoplasm from the dream dimension. Actually the thought of
losing Howard was the emotional trigger that once again allowed him to use his
ability to create solid thought figures. He devised a complicated stratagem to
take Howard away from Wonder Woman and also destroy her, but in such a fashion
that Howard would not directly blame him. [37]

One of
Dr. King's psychiatric patients in a bogus practice he had set up after
escaping from prison was a former ballerina named Helena Alexandros.
She was rather plain faced with many skin blemishes. In his sessions with her,
Dr. King discovered that she hated all men. Using his projective telepathy, Dr.
King invaded Helen Alexandros’ dreams. He appeared to
her in the form of Ares‑according to the comic books one of Wonder
Woman's greatest foes. He revealed to Helen that she was descended on her
mother’s side from Zeus, Leda, and Helen of Troy. Dr. King told her that he
could grant her beauty and power through her heritage of blood if she would
destroy Wonder Woman. Helen agreed, and was transformed into the beautiful
Silver Swan, with the powers of flight, great strength, and a "swan
song" that could wreak destruction. Dr. King told the Swan that Helena would be able to change into her
for an hour at a time, as long as she served him, and on the day that she destroyed
Wonder Woman, she would become the Silver Swan forever. He sculpted her a new body out of ectoplasm when she
"transformed" into the Silver Swan. The swan song and its destructive
effects were all illusionary.

Wonder
Woman checked up on Steve Howard at the hospital and learned from Dr. Prescott,
who was in charge of him, that Steve was not endangered by his head wound, but
that, somehow, his body or soul seem to be in transition. Left alone with him,
Wonder Woman managed to bring Steve back to consciousness. Shortly afterwards,
the Amazon came upon a gang of bank robbers, and a new arrival, a flying,
costumed female who called herself the Silver Swan, helped her bring them in.
The Silver Swan flew off and Wonder Woman discovered that the briefcase of
secret documents she and Steve had been carrying was gone. Following the Silver
Swan, Wonder Woman attempted to retrieve the briefcase, but the Silver Swan
snatched it away and defeated the Amazon in battle. Unwilling to destroy Wonder
Woman around witnesses, the Swan turned over the briefcase to the military and
convinced General Darnell and company that she mistakenly thought Wonder Woman was stealing it. Wonder Woman herself was not convinced.

At the
hospital Steve Howard found himself in the hands of a new arrival, Dr. Psycho. [38]

When
Diana returned to the hospital to check on Howard, she learned that a doctor,
answering the description of her old foe Dr. Psycho had transferred him to a
private hospital. Psycho had strapped down Howard to a table with the aid of
his henchman Melvin. Wonder Woman learned where Howard had been taken and burst
into his room. Just as she burst in, Psycho summoned a mass of ectoplasm from
Howard. Dr. Psycho used the ectoplasm to build a new, costumed body-shell for
himself. This is new body was a duplicate of Steve Howard although in a costume
resembling Wonder Woman's. This new body was as powerful as Wonder Woman and
probably represented a fusion of King's desires for both Howard and Wonder
Woman. In his new form King called himself Captain Wonder. Wonder Woman was
hard-pressed in battling him, until she succeeded in knocking him around and
broke his concentration. This caused his Captain Wonder identity to dissolve.
There were probably also psychological reasons why Psycho could not maintain
this form for very long. The Amazon was about to leave with Steve Howard when
the Silver Swan broke in and declared she had come to kill them both. [39]

Wonder
Woman battled the Silver Swan and encircled her with the magic lasso, but the
Swan’s ectoplasmic shell gave her the ability to
stave off domination. Dr. King was able to use Steve Howard to produce enough
ectoplasm to turn himself into Captain Wonder again. As Captain Wonder he
attacked Wonder Woman, gained control of the lasso, freed the Swan, and roped
Wonder Woman. The Silver Swan fell in love with Captain Wonder at first sight.
She agreed to his plan to take the captive heroine to the White House and kill
her before the eyes of President Ronald Reagan. But Ares appeared to the Swan
and demanded that she order Captain Wonder to send Diana's invisible plane
crashing into the White House and thus murder the President and destroy Wonder
Woman and Steve Howard. The Swan and Captain Wonder loaded Howard and Wonder
Woman into the plane and took off for Washington.

Steve
Howard awakened from his coma and grabbed the lasso from Captain Wonder,
freeing Wonder Woman. Having no time to waste, Diana punched Captain Wonder, knocking
him from the plane. Shocked by the fall, King was unable to maintain his
Captain Wonder persona, but he did manage to cushion his fall with telekinesis
before hitting the ground. The Silver Swan attacked Wonder Woman, but was
defeated, and the Amazon managed to prevent her plane from smashing the White
House and endangering President Reagan. Dr. King also lost his control over the
Silver Swan ectoplasmic body and plain old Helen
appeared. Of course in the comics it was Ares who withdrew her powers and
returned her to the Helen Alexandros identity. When
Helen saw Dr. King, she was frightened and ran away. Finally, Wonder Woman
reunited with Steve.[40]
Dr. King sustained a head injury causing brain damage that seemed to have
eradicated his mental powers for a time.

Sometime
during 1984, Dr. King escaped from jail, now known to be with the aid of the
Luthor family, specifically Lex Luthor II and Alexis Luther. The Luthors had
captured the villainous Mr. Hyde and subjected him to cybernetic augmentations
including crystalline kryptonite bone spurs. They needed The Brain Wave to
control the mind of Mr. Hyde so that he would kill ruthlessly, not allowing his
inner morality to take control of him at a possible crucial moment.

The
mind-controlled Hyde successfully killed Superman (ClarkKent), Super-Girl, and Power Girl.
However, their roles was eventually taken over by
others. The Luthors successfully made it appear as though these killings were a
scheme of the Ultrahumanite and The Brain Wave. The
Superman family took it upon themselves to exile these two villains to the
Phantom Zone in 1985.[41]

NOTES

[1] John however was not raised by Paul Finglemore
and Margot Picardotaka
Thomas Wainwright and Margaret Wainwright but rather by Dr. Thomas Wainwright
and “Pax” Wainwright in England. Why is further explained in the Paul
Luthor and Odd John sections of this piece.

[2] One of the progenitors of his genius as well as his
distorted physique was his ancestor the seriously genetically twisted George
Gordon, Lord Byron, from whom Paul Finglemore could also claim descent. If all
the research about Lord Byron is correct, he was not only a Capellean-Human
hybrid and a Mover for the Tocs and Ogs, he also carried both the Highlander strain of
immortality and a form of vampirism. The latter two manifested after his
"death". Yet Paul must have also been affected by something circa
1898, for many of his children conceived after this date displayed traits that
those conceived earlier did not.

[3] More about Dr. King's career as Dr. Sivana
will be explored in the forthcoming article Lightning Dreams: The story of
Billy Batson

[4] To this day it is not truly known what exactly Henry
King's powers were. Scientists and psychic researchers are divided on this
question. Among the various theories are that he was a powerful projective
telepath who made people believe that they were seeing, hearing, feeling
three-dimensional images when in fact it all took place in their minds. Other
researchers, more cognitive of his ancestral history believed that Dr. King using
a variation of his ancestor's Mover (see the article Aliens Among Us. Toc and Ogs for more on
the Movers) power had the ability to draw energy from the Phantom Zone and give
it substance and animation through his own psyche. Others of course believe
that he actually did contact the spiritual realm and commanded the souls of the
dead to do his bidding, an ability derived from a vampiric
heritage. As The Brain Wave, King made ludicrous claims of having been
descended from George Gordon, Lord Byron and also from Dracula, King of the
Vampires. This was probably a ruse to throw researchers off of the track.

[5] Dr. Elba appears in All Star Comics 8, that he was
a tool of The Brain Wave is revealed in All Star Squadron 20

[6]According
to The Secret Wars: The Modern Age by Jess Nevins
the device that the Green Lantern used “was technologically advanced but its
use had a deleterious effect on its user, perhaps due to a radiation leak of
some kind, and it was confiscated, by the American government, following the
death of the ‘Green Lantern’." Nevins in A
Wold Newton Universe Timeline states "Alan Scott, an American engineer, discovers an alien
weapon while in China. He uses it for a brief period to do good, but due to a kind of radiation leak is killed by the weapon
within a few weeks' time." These are true statements but not fully true.
The device was alien in origin, it did have a deleterious effect on its user
and it was confiscated by the United States government after the death of Alan Scott.
Mr. Nevins is however mistaken in how fast the device
killed the user, it took years rather than three
weeks. The exact origin of the artifact in question was correctly identified by
C. Richard Davies in his The Green Light of
Justice as being created
by the Arisians, who have also been known as the
Preservers, Guardians, Ancients, and various other names, but perhaps most
fittingly as the Omni. The artifact was not a lantern as previously believed
the Lantern was merely its hiding place. The artifact was a small piece
of crystal shaped into a ring. This particular crystal was a fragment of a
larger piece and so was flawed. Although the crystals were supposed to be
indestructible, some great force in the past had fractured it. The crystal was
a prototype what would later be known as the Lens as created by the Arisians for an elite guard on Atlantis and Lemuria. They were keyed to the descendants of two
particular families the Kinnisons and a group of families
with the distinctive traits of gold flecked eyes, bronze hair and tanned skin,
which could be designated “the Bronze family.” Alan Scott was descended from
some members the Bronze family. Later models of the Lens would be keyed to
individuals and would self-destruct upon the death of their owners.

The crystal
fragment attuned to Alan Scott, but imperfectly, and this imperfect match was
like a grafted organ that eventually is recognized as a foreign object by the
body and is rejected. The use of this power unknowingly caused damage to
Scott’s brain function, lymphatic system, and immune system. In the comics Alan
Scott is shown creating visible objects of green light that are molded by his
will, and the ring also allowed him to fly and made him immune to everything
but wood. The crystal fragment did give off a light when it was used, but this
was a polychromatic light; the effects that Scott created were actually psionically created multihued force fields. The weakness to
wood was created by Scott's unconsciousness when a man wielding a wooden club
startled him and knocked him unconscious when Scott allowed his force field to
drop. From thereafter he believed that wood could hurt him, and so it could.
The ring also allowed him to fly, but only for short distances. Zipping from
coast to coast was purely fictional. Use of the ring also fatigued him to a
great degree; an hour's worth of use was the equivalent of four hours of
intense physical strain.

The
obvious question as to why Alan Scott did not end the war by himself or
combined with other "super powered" beings such as Superman, the
Flash, Wonder Woman, etc., is simply that he could not. On his own Scott would not have been
powerful enough to fly over the ocean, take on the entire German army, reach Berlin, and capture Hitler and the rest of the
Nazi High Command. His ring simply was not that powerful. It is also rather
naïve to believe that once engaged in this war of conquest that the military
command of Germany would have ceased combat operations merely
to have Adolf Hitler and other high ranking officials
returned to them.

As for Superman,
Hugo Danner had fought in WWI and wanted no part of another war such as that.
His years in the future had given him a wider perspective on historical events
and he realized that however terrible it might seem, the war had to play out.
In the comics Clark Kent tried to join the Army but was rejected
because of vision problem, however the actual reason that Kent did not pursue a military career was
because he was a conscientious objector. This is not to say he was not a
patriot, but he had taken a vow not to use his power to kill or to place
himself in a situation where his powers would put him in a position of
authority over humanity, as winning the war would have certainly have done.
Certainly adulation would have come at first, but then would have come fear and
distrust.

Wonder Woman with
her invisible "plane" and enhanced strength may have been able to
make a dent had she been able. Wonder Woman and Namor
and a team of non-super powered individuals did make three or four attempts to
breach the Nazi's offenses and capture the German High Command. Each time,
however, minor and major set backs prevented them from accomplishing their
mission. Wonder Woman, and others, began to wonder if some force or power was
preventing them from ending the war, as if the war had to run its course. Some
in the Allied Command believed this as well, but others believed that the
heroes had jinxed their own mission. Another speculation was that there
was something to the Axis propaganda about the Spear of Destiny or Holy Grail
influencing people who came within its area of influence or the similar story
of Parsifal, the German hero who canceled out superpowers. Wary that there
might be some truth to such rumors, the Allied Command did not make having the
heroes penetrate Axis territory a feasible strategic option.

[7]In the
comic book Wonder Woman, believing the JSA to be in dire straits, organized a
rescue team of herself, Hawkgirl, Peachy Pet Thunder,
Inza Cramer, Doris Lee and Dian Belmont. Disguised as
their male counterparts, they assaulted the tower at SharktoothBay but were captured by Brain Wave's
projected images of the JSA. The JSA presently arrived in force, rescued the
heroines, and turned the battle to the Brain Wave, who seemingly plunged to his
death (All-Star Comics #15).

[8]Hawkman and his girlfriend—later
wife—were masked vigilantes based in the Boston area. They had created what amounted to antigravity belts
by using what they called the “Nth metal.” This appears to be the same
substance known as Cavorite. There was a very limited supply of Cavorite or Nth
metal in the world, all deriving from from the
fragments of a spacecraft that had crashed near Egypt thousands of years before. Although cavorite
or the Nth metal was activated by and fueled by solar radiation to interact
with electromagnetic forces by default to negate gravity, the substance was
psycho reactive agent and how interfaced with electromagnetic forces could be
controlled by thought. One side effect of this mental control was that the
metal retained impressions of its users. When
Carter Hall started to use the Nth metal belts, he
began to believe that he was reincarnated from an ancient Egyptian, but
actually he was picking up the mental impressions of one or more of its
previous owners. Dr. Fate's power were quite exaggerated in the comics, he did
possess super strength, limited invulnerability, flight, and the ability to
project force beams from his hands or eyes. These were not magical functions,
however, but rather functions of the Helmet of Nabu.
The Helmet of Nabu was an extraterrestrial object
most likely related to the various power suits later found by the Thunder
Agents

[9] Although The Spectre and Starman were depicted as taking part in this adventure, the
Spectre was a fictional character and the Starman actually rarely left his home city of Miami, Florida.

[10] In 1979 a woman's body that had been preserved in
formaldehyde was discovered hidden in a wall of one Dr. Forest Malone's former
residences. Forensic pathology revealed that the body had been sexually
assaulted and strangled. At first forensic psychiatrists believe that Dr. King
had tried to seduce the girl and had been violently rebuffed. Enraged, he had
assaulted and killed her. Fingerprints however proved that the woman was Dr.
King's wife Marva. The killing rage and the ensuing guilt and denial had
unleashed the most powerful of his psionic gifts. King had created an on-going
illusion of his murdered wife; so great was his denial that he actually
believed that the illusion was Marva, alive and in love with him.

[11] It now in fact appears that his first wife and his first
medium, Marva was, in fact his first psychic manifestation and that he could in
fact create these solid illusions on his own. How he did it is still up for
debate. More recently researchers have suggested that he could tap into the
other dimensional realities such as the dreamlands or tooniverse
or realms of raw chaos and built bodies out of dreamstuff,
toonstuff, or raw chaos. Others still maintain that
the illusions were not solid at all, it was just Dr.
King's projective telepathy making all who saw them perceive them as real.

[12] Since Marva was in fact a solid manifestation of Dr.
King's subconscious, her unwillingness may have represented an underlying sense
of morality that his conscious mind ran roughshod over. Confronted by Wonder
Woman, his subconscious rebelled and the ectoplasmic
power was lost. Feeling guilty about his crimes, he allowed himself to be
jailed and punished. Despite his madness, King was cunning enough to use his
dwarfed, big headed Dr. Psycho guise rather than his true appearance of a
frail, bald headed man, or his guise of handsome Dr. Forest Malone.

[13] The comic book version, (Wonder Woman 160 February
1966) states that this was plot by Ares to demonstrate that the powers given to
Wonder Woman by the female deities were nothing compared to those given to her
by the male ones, Hercules and Mercury, Ares gave those powers to Dr. Psycho.
However the simpler and truer explanation is that Dr. Psycho made Wonder Woman
believed that she had lost those abilities and that he had gained them, making
everyone see and believe that he had beaten her when in fact he had not.

[16] The comics version, ("The Three Fantastic Faces of
Wonder Woman," Wonder Woman 165, October 1966), depicts Dr. Psycho
splitting Wonder Woman into two people with a ray gun of his devising.

[17] That Dr. Psycho had chosen a whale in which to chain
Wonder Woman is interesting psychologically. The whale might have represented
obsession. As Ahab was obsessed with trapping and destroying Moby Dick,
so was Dr. Psycho obsessed with trapping and killing Wonder Woman

[22] According to his biography, The Thinker was a young
district attorney named Clifford Devoe who had failed
to convict the criminal kingpin of Keystone city, Hunk Norvock,
because his witnesses suddenly began giving favorable testimony for Norvock. KeystoneCity was DC’s stand-in for Philadelphia in the Golden Age. Disillusioned, Devoe
offered to use his legal training and brilliant mind to work for Novok. Devoe was in seclusion for
about a decade. Norvock suddenly called upon Devoe to help him with the problem that was plaguing him,
the Golden Age Flash. Devoe eliminated all witnesses
against Norvock and realized that Norvock
would kill him rather than be grateful. Devoe
maneuvered Norvock into shooting himself. Devoe then seized control of Novak’s criminal empire. He
was one of the 1940's Flash's most constant opponents. In the late forties he
acquired the Thinking Cap, a cybernetic device that amplified intelligence.
Actually the story is a bit more complicated than that. As will be explained in
greater detail in the Lawrence Luthor article, Clifford Devoe's sudden
conversion to crime and his decade of disappearance was due to the fact that in
late 1933 while in a drunken stupor, Clifford Devoe
became the first victim of the Black Beller known as Braniac.)

[23] The true origin of Per Degaton will also be revealed later
in this article.

[24] The Gambler was one of the first criminals to follow the
lead of the vigilantes and work in costume. His guise was of an old riverboat
gambler, but in reality he was a master of disguise. He based his costume on his
grandfather, who was a renowned river boat gambler and an acquaintance of George Devol. George Devol was the
renowned riverboat gambler who wrote the classic 40 Years A
Gambler On Mississippi and Henry Finn. Steven Sharpe spent time with a carnival,
learning a variety of knife throwing and make-up techniques to complete his
disguises; he became acquainted with the Wizard during this training period.
Although the Gambler had sprung to national fame by pulling off a small-town
bank robbery against heavy odds, Sharpe in fact began his career in the
Mississippi Delta by robbing trains and small-town banks. By 1944, the
Gambler's grew tired of the small amounts he was taking from Midwestern banks
and went East for larger hauls.

[25] The Wizard, according the biography given to him by DC
Comics was a small-time crook with the name William I. Zard,
who learned magic while in prison. He eventually ended up, as did everyone it
seems in the Thirties and Forties who wanted to learn esoterica,
in Tibet. He learned the art of illusion and returned to the United States where he used his knowledge for crime. The origin given to
the Wizard by DC comics was mostly fictional because the truth would have been
hurtful to many people. The Wizard had been a stage magician of some renown, Mephisto the Marvelous, a contemporary of Houdini—who had
counted him as a friend/rival in the arts of prestidigitation and escape. When Mephisto's wife and child died, he became an opium and
cocaine addict. This eventually led him to use his skills for criminal
endeavors. )

[26] The comic book version has the Gambler taking on the Atom,
but the Atom was not adventuring much after his near fatal electrocution by Gudra the Valkyrie.

[27] By this time Alan Scott was in almost constant pain from
the effects of his ring. The ring was designed to kill unauthorized users and
the ring did not wholly accept him as an authorized user, so its defense
mechanism attempted to kill him. But the ring was also designed to protect its
wearer, so it repaired the damage caused by its defense mechanism. Over time
Scott’s immune system was compromised, and he wholly depended on the ring for
his health. To remove the ring would have meant certain death. The ring kept
him alive, yet at the same time it was killing him. Over time Scott's body
could no longer tolerate the constant destruction and rebuilding of his
tissues, and he would take the ring off and succumb to sickness a few weeks
later. This happened in late 1949. Later stories about Alan Scott were based on
previously untold exploits or should be taken as tributes to a man who was a hero
despite his constant agony.

[28] All Star Comics 37, November 1947
"The Injustice Society of the World"

[32] This version diverges from the comics
version (All-Star Comics 58-59, January-February 1976- March-April 1976)

[33] All-Star Comics #66 May-June 1977The
comic book version has the Star Spangled Kid involved in this case. This is
because Omega did not wish the publicity. Oddly enough the original Wizard was
one of the men in the Omega organization who captured Dr. King at this time.

[34] This was not the original Wonder Woman from the forties
but rather her daughter Lyta Trevor who assumed the role in 1975

[36] Dr. King's jealousy of Wonder Woman over Steve Howard was
misdirected. Although the comics portrayed a romantic relationship between
Wonder Woman and Steve Howard, to echo the earlier forties romance between
Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, Wonder Woman and Howard were only good friends
and partners. Her true romantic relationship was very secret until recently.
She was currently dating another member of the intelligence community named
Arnold Munro.

[41] There is a persistent rumor that Henry King had a son by
Merry Pemberton who inherited his powers. Others have theorized that that the
red headed man who bore a striking resemblance to the illusionary form
projected by The Brain Wave in the seventies was nothing more than that, a
thought image projected from the Phantom Zone or perhaps the wily villain had
escaped.